Page 106 - SAMENA Trends - January-February 2025

REGULATORY & POLICY UPDATES SAMENA TRENDS

New ITU Coalition to Bridge AI Skills Gap for Developing Countries

educational materials that can bolster
skills for the future and address global
inequalities in AI knowledge. Meanwhile,
the ITU will work with the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) to leverage
UNDP's presence in over 170 countries
and territories to deliver AI capacity
development directly to partner countries.
“Capacity development is the number one
ask from the developing countries that we
work in,” said Achim Steiner, administrator
of UNDP. “As part of this Coalition, we
will work with our partners to deliver
crucial foundational AI training, so that
policy-makers and national governments
can responsibly harness AI to achieve
sustainable development.” The initiative
will also address underrepresentation
The International Telecommunication already see AI as critical for the success of of marginalized groups such as women,
Union (ITU) said it has launched the AI their organizations, according to a recent youth, and persons with disabilities in the
Skills Coalition, an initiative to bridge the AI for Good Impact Report published by development of AI products and services,
global AI skills gap that has the backing ITU and Deloitte. However, insufficient the ITU said. The coalition initiative will be
of 27 organizations, including Amazon technical skills and the need for extensive rolled out in phases, starting with the launch
Web Services, Microsoft, the East Africa upskilling and reskilling are among key of a new training platform developed by
Community and Cognizant. According barriers to broader AI adoption globally, the ITU in March 2025. The platform will
to the ITU, the coalition will serve as an as well as a considerable lack of trust in include a comprehensive training portfolio
online platform for AI education and AI amid fears that it will replace human and a customizable digital library of AI
capacity building that will also encourage jobs, the ITU said. Recent announcements material supplied by coalition members,
inclusive participation by offering open regarding the launch of AI cloud as well as self-paced courses, webinars,
and accessible skills training on generative infrastructure investments in developing access to in-person workshops, and hybrid
AI, machine learning and applying AI for markets by big-name players like Google, programs tailored to diverse learning needs
sustainable development. The rise of AI has AWS and Microsoft have typically come – all offered free of charge, The coalition
prompted the telecoms and ICT sectors to with promises of local AI skills training, but will also develop specialized government
prep their digital infrastructures and data the ITU says a more global and inclusive training in AI governance, ethics, and
centers to support bandwidth and compute- approach is needed to address the issue policymaking to address the specific
intensive AI workloads. Meanwhile, an and ensure more stakeholders are involved. needs of developing countries and least
estimated 94% of global business leaders The AI Skills Coalition aims to will provide developed countries (LDCs), the ITIU said.

Regulators and EU Agree Over Splitting Telecoms Companies

At a meeting with top officials of the Italian born cases where other remedies have the peculiarities of the Italian market, could
regulatory authority for telecommunica- failed". She added: "It is the responsibility be a win-win solution as has been the case
tions, Information Society Commissioner of legislators both at European and at na- in the UK market," where the incumbent,
Viviane Reding was determined to intro- tional level to ensure that, in the interest of BT, was forced to create a separate com-
duce functional separation as a "last-resort legal certainty, there is a sound legal ba- pany, Openreach, to operate the network
remedy" in telecoms liberalization. Reding sis for applying functional separation. To business. Calabrò went on to say: "We have
reaffirmed her conviction that "national enable regulators to do their job properly, started an intense discussion with Telecom
telecoms regulators should be given this legislators will need in particular to define Italia and initiated a public consultation on
tool that can promote both competition clearly the required elements of this reme- the subject. We are ready to go further on
and investment". She stressed, however, dy and the conditions under which it may this route and I am confident that the Ital-
that the disputed splitting-up of telecoms be used by an independent telecoms regu- ian Parliament will soon approve legislation
incumbents should be applied only as a lator." ERG President Calabrò said: "We are giving AGCOM powers to apply functional
"last-resort remedy to address the stub- convinced that functional separation, given separation."

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